NEStalgia Week Pt.3; An Erosion of Skills in Castlevania III

One of my core beliefs is that adults are better than children at pretty much everything that’s worth doing. We’re bigger, stronger, faster and smarter than these little people, and we rarely have to prove it because we literally own and control everything. The next time some baby fires me from a job or beats me to the good seat on the bus will be the first. But as I’m finding out, one of the few areas in which Child H might have had the upper hand over Adult H is in video games.

The Nintendo catalog has been kicking my ass so far. I’ve mostly been shut out on runs at games I used to polish off without a sweat. Mega Man 2? Gave Wood Man the business, then didn’t even make it through Air Man’s stage for the boss fight. Marble Madness? Wasted too much time on the Silly stage, then totally ran aground on the first obstacle in the Ultimate race. Castlevania III? Hoo boy, let me tell you about that.

The story of a character named Help Me

The Castlevania games were never ones to build up your self esteem. The first one was actually pretty nice in terms of it’s learning curve and difficulty, but required you to play with measured pace and an abundance of caution. The second one was opaque in it’s direction, and even with instruction on how to proceed turned out to be pretty tedious, as the Video Game Nerd once so eloquently pointed out. And then, there was Castlevania III. Dracula’s Curse. One of the Nintendo’s all time great games, and definitely a hard row to hoe. I owned it and beat it several times as a kid. Now, I’m finding the road is a little tougher.

Herky jerky quickness for a game where moving slowly and cautiously is the order of the day? Sounds awesome.

If you don’t recall, Castlevania 3 was the one that allowed you to play as a few alternate characters in addition to your standard-issue whip & dagger toting Belmont; Grant the Pirate, Syfa the Vampire Hunter, and Alucard the Vampire. It’s not terribly surprising given their full titles, but none of these guys got along with each other, so you could only tote along one at a time.

I didn’t play with Grant much as a kid. Yeah, the clock tower level was pretty sweet, but it was also long, and after beating it you still had to do the laborious half of the haunted forest anyways. The 1st half of the haunted forest was a point-collecting waltz, and then the 2nd half was a slow slog of attrition that you had to do in both cases, so why waste 20 minutes of game time to pick up a dude that was hard to use and was going to bail out as soon as you picked up a better partner?

The “job” he’s talking about was ditching 3 lives by falling off ledges into pits.

After the owls picked you half to pieces, and with or without your spry but fragile friend Grant depending on if you went up the tower first, you faced the game’s most crucial fork in the road. The top path led you to the game’s best alternate character, Syfa, and then the Ghost Ship level. Syfa looked hideous, like they never bothered to color in his sprite, but he was actually pretty interesting in terms of game play, and his spells could be devestating if used correctly. He was the slowest character, but again, proceeding cautiously is the order of the day in this game. Sadly though, I didn’t play with Syfa much as a kid either. I was smitten with the bottom path.

The bottom path took you through the arduous demon frog swamp and the mysterious mining caves, where you picked up the game’s other alt personality, Alucard. Big Al was always my choice of partner growing up, because when you’re a kid, having the ability to turn into a bat and fly around is going to trump any questions of strategy or subtle applications of skill. When I was young, I breezed through the swamps and caves, picked up Drac’s son, and went right on my merry way through the flooding level, no sweat. Now, every 3rd frog that hops out of the mud takes a bite out of me. I don’t have my timing down on the bats, and half of them go ahead and bonk me on the way by.

Fixin’ to take some damage.

Now, when I finally do get through the Caves and get Alucard on the bandwagon, whatever momentum I had grinds to a halt. Those lightning mummies that toss the bandages or snakes or whatever the fuck they are? Ugh, that’s like half my life bar. Big Al keeps getting hit and can’t kill anything with his weak little glow ball shot. All the enemies just shrug it off like it’s nothing. All he’s really good for is flying around. Further complicating things, he’s about a half block taller than everyone else, so he also gets bonked by more stuff than the rest of the characters.

Alucard, doing what he does best: Get hit by projectiles.

So after Bat Boy and Trevor’s quest met an end, I figured it was about time to go back and play through the Syfa route. That hasn’t been any picnic either. Because I spent so much time playing the lower road as a kid, I neglected the supposedly easier high path. Now, there’s nothing easy about it, because even without Alucard or Grant throwing themselves into pits and burning off my extra lives, my memories of it are fuzzier, which leads to it’s own problems. “What am I supposed to do against the Cyclops again? Oh, that’s right, I stand over here and- oh, whoops, no. He clubbed me to death. Shit.”

The good news is I’m getting better, but I’m not sure Dracula needs to be sweating things just yet. Although Adult H might not to be any threat to Young H gaming wise, after my repetitive failure at Castlevania 3, I did get to crack open a beer, walk downstairs, smoke a cigarette and watch the city stroll by for a few minutes. I enjoyed the cool evening air at my leisure. If I wanted to, I could have gone to the gentleman’s club. You can do that kinda stuff when you’re a grown man. You can have Castlevania III superiority, young H. I’m not threatened.

3 thoughts on “NEStalgia Week Pt.3; An Erosion of Skills in Castlevania III”

Well, that escalated quickly! 😛 Now, though I never played Catlevania III myself, I must say we have lost, with age, some of our good reflexes. Beating those games are not as easy as before anymore, or at least we have not the patience. But I still prefer to die trying. Nice review!

I sort of find that I’m better at strategy and puzzle games than when I was young, but definitely not as quick on action/shooters. Had a nice run on Rad Racer though. Hated using the brakes when I was a kid.